Falling Off The Chocolate Wagon

The long wait is finally over. After two full months plus a day, thanks mister leap year, I am finally able to eat chocolate once again. I haven’t been this excited since high school grad night only this time I KNOW I’m getting what I want.

This was hard. HARD! The past two months were difficult, especially the previous two or three weeks. That’s when the lack of chocolate, my go to snack, stress reliever, and sinful indulgence, really started to weigh on my psyche. Even the simple pleasure of a chocolate chip banana muffin was beyond my reach all because of a half dozen little bits of chocolate. I was going mad.

But I did it and I’m damned proud of that fact. I really didn’t believe I’d have the resolve to follow through on this resolution but I did. And despite the difficulty of the last few days, I did it far more easily than I expected. When you consider how much time I spend alone with nobody around to keep me honest, it’s a veritable miracle that I never succumbed to temptation. I’m proud of that fact since a lack of willpower in resisting temptations was one of the primary reasons for endeavouring to avoid chocolate in the first place. I’ve now proven I can do it for lengthy periods of time. That is no small victory for me.

I found putting this resolution into words and sharing it with the world certainly helped my resolve, as did my children knowing. They were fantastic in both encouraging me and nagging me into compliance. They wholly bought into my goal and wished me success every bit as much as if it were their own. For that I am grateful and I know they’ll continue to have my back should I make additional goals like this in the future.

Today, I will shame myself as I make up for two months of no chocolate. This will not be pretty, nor healthy, nor advisable, but it will happen. The video below is documentation of how a true chocoholic falls off a wagon. I have no regrets in leaping headfirst off that wagon. The results, though, will give you pause.

As for what I do next, that is another matter altogether. I’ve rather enjoyed my abstinence from the brown ambrosia. I think going forward I would do well to continue to testing myself further. Maybe not for full 2 month stints, or longer, but at the least abstain from impulse indulging. I’d like to enjoy a chocolate cake on my children’s birthdays or a Valentine treat from my wife but continue resisting all the in between stuff where I snag a bar of chocolate while out picking up a jug of milk.